ABSTRACT
The shift in thinking in the last decade or so about the advantages that ICTs would bring to rural areas is well summed up as ‘from dream to reality’. The dream was that the distance-transcending attributes of the technologies would bring specific, additional benefits to rural areas; the reality was a worry that many were being left behind by their more urban counterparts in adopting the trappings of the ‘Information Society’. The concern was particularly for those rural areas already struggling to maintain an adequate economy and quality of life – typically those with low GDP, sparse and dispersed populations, difficult topologies, and/or those remote from major centres of population and markets. Such areas would frequently have a European or national designation as a rural deprived region, or as a rural area in a mixed deprived region. Any lack in terms of ICT provision and use could exacerbate their existing deprived status.
